


prophet may you be

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [286]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Foreshadowing, Formenos, Gen, Homecoming, Hurt/Comfort, Parentification, Sickfic, head colds, post-Maedhros & Finrod antics, post-Nerdanel visiting the city, pre-Ceili, set in the busy spring of 1847, title from Shakespeare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:15:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26002525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Maedhros arrives at Formenos, and promptly falls ill.
Relationships: Fëanor | Curufinwë & Maedhros | Maitimo, Maedhros | Maitimo & Maglor | Makalaurë, Maedhros | Maitimo & Morgoth Bauglir | Melkor, Maedhros | Maitimo & Nerdanel, Maedhros | Maitimo & Sons of Fëanor
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [286]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	prophet may you be

The coach doors spring open and Formenos is upon them—in the fresh rain scent, in the cloud-heads of June thunder soon to arrive, in the wind molding the gestures of leaves. The pines that march uphill and down have not forgotten _Maitimo_ and _Macalaure_. No—the pines, grand and all but eternal, can recognize them yet in _Maedhros_ and _Maglor_ , stumbling from their cramped quarters, trunks and boxes tumbling after them.

“Here we are again,” Maglor mutters, as if he goes to his doom. As if he does not love it all as much as Maedhros.

It is not under the weight of love that Maedhros staggers, however; his stride is split by the axe of an inescapable headache. The pain has plagued him almost since they departed the City—a dozen hours ago. It is seven o’clock now, or thereabouts, and light still hangs in the sky.

The rain has passed. It is truly summer.

He sneezes into his sleeve and hoists his smallest trunk to his shoulder.

“Come, love,” he says. Pet names and endearing epithets do much for Maglor’s ruffled, yet poetic feathers. “Don’t be cross.”

Hay-making—bread-baking—berrying in the thickets and woodland dells—

Maedhros’ throat is sore.

No self-respecting mail coach traverses a drive as long as that of Formenos, and so Maedhros and Maglor are left to their own devices with three trunks, two boxes, a carpet-bag, and Maglor’s fiddle case between them. Each takes a handle of the largest trunk; Maglor carries his case, and struggles to fit the bag under his arm.

“We’ll have to leave the rest here at present,” Maedhros says. “No matter. The trunk is sound enough for a little mud, and we’ll lay what’s left atop it.”

Maglor scoffs. “They might have come out and waited for us.”

“They may still be at supper.”

“Oh!” cries Maglor. “Now there’s one thing I haven’t missed at all—supper with the twins smearing their gravy-daubed hands over _everything_ , and Celegorm, sharing half his meal with Breena, and Athair—”

He stops short, surprising Maedhros…but only for a moment. Maglor cannot exactly complete the thought when Athair, a nimbus of sunset light blurring his eager edges, is striding towards them.

“What ho, weary travelers!’ he calls. “ _Dia dhaoibh_.”

“ _Dia is Muire dhuit_ ,” they answer, as one. Maedhros’ eyes are too much weakened by a day spent inside the shadowed coach, but his smile gets the better of him. Burdened though he is—though they both are—it is all he can manage not to lurch forward, leaving Maglor woefully out of step.

There is still that child instinct in him, to be first. A lifetime must train it out of him, if he is to be fair and kind to his brothers; his friends.

Athair closes the distance between them anyway. He embraces them together, so that the luggage must be momentarily abandoned (all but Maglor’s fiddle-case, which Maedhros feels digging at his ribs).

Athair smells like smoke and fresh-cut timber, which is usual, for him. Maedhros has freed both his arms, and so he clings selfishly close.

“Neither of you have learned strength in ingenuity,” Athair says, over their shoulders. “A trunk and two boxes, do I see waiting there? You could have managed it all at once, with a little application of physics.”

“Ought we have flung them by catapult into the barn?” Maglor demands.

Athair steps back and releases them. He ignores the question.

“No matter. I shall assist you now. We should hurry…everyone is at table. How light the sky remains! Your mother said you should not come until dusk, but I predicted your arrival almost down to the minute.”

Maedhros can only be grateful to be relieved of a second journey to the end of the drive; his legs feel leaden and his shoulders ache almost as much as his head. He has not had a drop of drink for nearly a week—he always tries to abstain so, before he returns home—but this feels like a nasty breed of drunkenness.

Of course, the spectrum of inebriation is broad, and not _all_ awash with unpleasantry…there is, at times, laughter and flushed skin and wild wit…

But there is also guilt and bile, and those seem to be joined and pointed in him, now. Likely, a priest would be well able to tell him _why_. Here he is, home again. Looking at last on things beloved, denied by his own vices, stirring sickly in his flesh.

Though it is not yet true evening, the lamplit windows shed the strongest shade of yellow-gold. Maedhros listens for the sound of the opening door, for the sound of voices. And they do come. Breena’s baying bark, Celegorm’s call, the littler voices that can only belong to the twins. The twins are babies no longer, but Maedhros still secretly pretends that they are. What shall he do without little ones to bear up on his shoulders, to tease and coax by turns, to be so utterly content with?

And Mother—

Athair has come out to greet them, but Mother _could_ not, by rights. She is occupied in the kitchen. And so, anticipating her, they must go in and find her. After they have been ravaged by the affections and yodels and grasping hands of Celegorm on down, the weary sojourners are paraded through the kitchen door, behind which Mother turns from the stove with even her apron billowing out eagerly.

“Boys! Good gracious, Feanor, don’t set those muddy things there—”

There is a great bustle after that. Indoors, every voice is heightened to unbearable pitch. Maedhros is slavishly glad to see them, would kneel and kiss each grubby knuckle as if it bore a papal ring, but he is also horribly tired. He wants to fall to his knees for weariness’ sake, too, and clap his hands over his ears.

Fortunately, Mother catches him before he does that. “Darling, you look positively fagged!” Her hands on his cheek and his brow are very pleasantly cool. Everything hurts _more_ , somehow, than it did in the carriage. There, he chalked half of the discomfort up to his usual travails, swallowing tenderly and snuffling into his handkerchief a little while Maglor gave vent to his dreams and vexations.

“Maedhros,” Athair is saying, far away. “Maedhros, are you ill? God—”

There are, in a haze, so many hands on his neck and shoulders, his spine and waist and arms, but he does not mind. Here is only love, in Formenos.

Maedhros wakes unable to breathe. His eyes are sore, and his throat is at once raw and putrid. He opens his mouth to gasp a little and is overcome with a wave of heart-stung chagrin almost more acute than his pain.

To waste a moment at home in illness! Oh, how the tragedy of it returns him swiftly to the fretfulness of childhood. He could almost weep, if his eyes were not so very dry and tender.

He turns his hot face against the pillow. He needs a piss, but that means lifting his head and shoulders and then the rest of his body, and he feels positively unseaworthy at the moment. If Finrod could see him now! They got along well enough together, that wicked, gleeful evening a few weeks since. He _always_ gets along well, when the world is watching—when drunkenness has made him clever as well as weak—

But here, it is different. This is the only world he wants, and somehow, whether through drink and late nights, or through indolence and too little nourishment (as Fingon would say), he has ruined it.

The temptation of tears returns, at that.

But then the door opens. He can’t smell a blessed thing, so he doesn’t know that Mother has brought him steaming broth until she sets the tray beside him.

“Good gracious,” she says, and by the light of one of Athair’s lamps—not turned up _too_ high, thank heavens—he can see that Mother has fitted herself out in the beauty of her softest smile. Maybe it is no attempt at concealment; maybe she does not even know that worry often appears in a furrow between her brows, quite different (to his sight) than the lines of concentration that appear there when she is busy with her work.

It is one of the most profound of his little losses—the loss of watching her work. Of course it is not truly his to lay claim to. _He_ has no skill with the clay-knife, with the wheel. His sketches are amateur; enough to amuse only children. Most of what he does at Formenos is enough to amuse children, and most of what he does in the City is enough to impress only the guileless, and the kindly blind.

Where lies ambition? Is it with his father’s purpose, or his mother’s hopes, or something darker than either of these?

(The world, to his sorry head, seems dark enough.)

“Oh, you are in a sad way,” Mother says, kneeling beside him. He turns away, so as not to foul her with his breath, and she touches his forehead with a cool, calloused hand. “A fever, still! My poor Maitimo, you were so well when I saw you in April. What a grievous change a month has made. A fie on this rain!”

He tries to croak an answer, but is not equal to it.

“Drink. Don’t try to talk. I shall have you father hold a candle just so, that we may see into your throat—does it hurt _very_ badly?”

He nods, and then is ashamed for nodding.

“Never mind. The good broth shall do it all, you will see. It’s never failed me before, and how many sick boys have I doctored? How many times have I doctored _you_?”

He captures one of her hands and clings to it. Ache upon ache, needing her when she is gone. Now that she is his again, his heart and his heavy head are too muzzy and maudlin to do him any good, to do them any justice.

The broth _does_ clear his throat enough to speak, at least.

“Where is Maglor?” he asks, for night has fallen and the room is empty, otherwise.

“I told him to join Celegorm and Curufin tonight,” she says. “He chose to room with the twins instead.”

“Oh…”

“None of that, dear one. Maglor is a great, grown boy, and one night’s deprivation of his own bed will not hurt him. Moreover, he did not protest a bit.”

Maedhros recalls the scene in the kitchen. “I must have given you all a fright.”

She chuckles. “The first time you gave me a fright you were in your cradle. I was sure you had smothered yourself among your blankets. I had nobody to tell me that I ought not hide you under so many. April is cold!” She frees her hand, only to stroke his hair. “My baby, you taught me so much. And tonight, you taught me to send your eager brothers next time, to carry your boxes in—lest you martyr yourself under the weight of a steamer trunk when you have heat in your blood.”

Mother cannot stay forever. She is gone, and yet sleep seems far away. When it does come, it sail through the windows black-masted, a midnight-heavy bark.

His throat is not so sore in the morning. That is not the comfort it should be, however, for he is as phlegmy and vile as a swamp-crawling creature, not fit to be seen by anyone, and not fit to speak to anyone. This, too, is a disappointment. The twins cannot come and keep him cozy, for they must be safely away from his coughs. Caranthir would visit, too, but he himself is often taken by head-colds, and so must send his love by means of butcher-paper notes and a miniature boule of farm-bread.

Celegorm stumps in around noon. He has grown since they met at Christmas. In August, he will be fifteen.

“You chose a fine time to be ill,” he says, shaking his head. “I can’t stay long—I’ve some business with Orome—but I came just to tell you that there are lily-of-the-valley sprouting the wood.”

“Orome?” Maedhros asks Mother, the next time she arrives, with ointment to rub on his chest and a steaming cloth to lay over his nose and mouth. “I did not know…”

“That your father had relented? Yes. He sees _some_ use in Orome’s hounds, and his hunting…that was only a spat over the ducks. Now shut your eyes, bairn. You haven’t scarlet fever, save in that pretty hair, but you needn’t strain yourself with all that peering, trying to make out what I mean.”

He shuts his eyes obediently.

Mother says, softly and truthfully (perhaps because no one is looking at her), “I forget that _you_ forget. How little your father means by some of his storms. It must be difficult to remember, when you do not often see him.”

“Indeed,” Maedhros whispers.

He has other thoughts, of Athair—other fears, come to that. But he cannot say as much to Mother.

Fear, if it _surprises_ , shames him as much as mewling does. Ordinarily he is used to a slow, vaguely shaped dread . . . Always _visible_ , and more so to Athair than to him. Maedhros has not forgotten, at lush nineteen, their parting conversation four years earlier. Athair spoke then of Melkor Bauglir, and gave a warning command to watch, to listen—even though the man himself was locked away, and remains so.

Athair chose a poor champion for his cause.

Maedhros _is_ a coward, though sometimes he thinks only he and the mirror know it. Athair is curiously blind to the fact, just as Athair is ignorant of April rain, of eyes deep as wells with knowledge glinting in them like a far-off sun on low waters. Or at least—Athair is ignorant of Maedhros’ knowledge of those eyes.

Athair touches his son’s cheek without thought. Asks profound favors without thought.

And Athair comes, every May, seeking news from his champion.

Miserable in body, if restlessly hopeful in mind, Maedhros rests his forearm against his throbbing forehead. It is his second day abed, and he has begun to pluck a little at the corners of the weighty dread. To see if it is not so heavy after all . . . If, because he is ill, Athair will have forgotten.

There is no news to tell; Maedhros never has any news. Athair keeps more abreast of Irish interests and abolition interests, than Maedhros does . . . in part because Athair keeps secret company that _could_ bring a mob down on his back when he visits the city. He had not thought Maedhros old enough to assist in his daring endeavors, when Maedhros was still at school.

Yet, he _had_ thought Maedhros old enough to keep his ear to the ground and listen for the tread of doom itself. Athair’s ways are mysterious, even now.

_Unless he is motivated solely by righteousness, and you are afraid of nothing._

The idea is too much. Maedhros shudders. It does not matter—his weariness, or the thick tension behind his eyes and under his cheekbones. His specter awaits him yet.

The dread is not—is not the fault of Athair.

Maedhros does not like to think about fault, any more than he likes to be shocked by a threat unforeseen. If he thinks too much of fault, he thinks of hands and mouths doing what they ought not (he has made something of a study of this lately, in ways that are, in a word, pleasing). He thinks of his meticulous efficiency with Grandfather’s cognac and whiskey and wine. He thinks of his relief in leaving such stealth behind, now that he has a house and a purse at his disposal. He thinks of tears and ink mingling on letters sent from home.

He thinks of Fingon, who knows not sin, and Finrod, who knows not fate.

Just how much fault can he pin to an April night, after all?

Maedhros falls asleep pondering the question, and wakes only when Athair raps at the door.

One would know the precise knocks anywhere.

“Hello, Maedhros,” Athair says. He is carrying a candle. “Your mother desires that I examine your throat.”

“Very good,” says Maedhros. The dread recedes, but it does not fade entirely. It never does.

Maedhros opens his mouth. With steady fingers, Athair grips his jaw and turns it slightly so that the flame may, safely removed, illuminate the tongue and tonsils.

“Were someone else to have charge of you, you’d be in danger of having wax poured down your throat,” he says, a faint smile on his lips. “No fear of that with me.”

_No fear._

Athair steps back, extinguishes the candle. “A little inflammation, nothing more. That is my official diagnosis. Do you feel very ill?”

Maedhros shakes his head. What does that portend, for him? Has he squandered the last escape he truly had—

Like a judge at bar, Athair takes a seat. He clasps his clever smith’s hands over his knees. Another of Maedhros’ small griefs: his hands are now larger, longer than Athair’s. Never again can his fingers be dwarfed and hidden in that steely grip. 

Maedhros is looking at Athair’s hands through still-bleary eyes, and Maedhros is thinking of how readily and wholly he loves his guiding betters, and Maedhros is (in his heart) trembling with knowledge.

As expected, Athair asks, “Did you see him?”

Maedhros does not remain ill forever. Even before the fever leaves him, he feels well enough to descend the stairs and tease Mother from her work. She scolds him gently for leaving his bed. Fingon would too. What a pity it is, he thinks, that Mother and Fingon cannot know each other better. He is sure they would be fond of one another. There is such a sweetness about them, as well as candor and practicality in generous measure. One can trust them so utterly. One can keep dark things locked silently away when with them, for they love best to walk side-by-side in daylight.

Or at least—Mother must have been like that once. She has so many cares, now.

Someday, likely, Fingon shall, too.

When it is apparent that Maedhros is on the mend, Maglor comes to visit. He brings his flute, and the wind-chime melodies he draws through it are enough to chase lingering headaches to the edges of feeling.

There is time, Maedhros tells himself; there is time. He can sleep too deeply for dreaming, and chase all doubt and sin away.

He can get well, with a little comfort and a little diversion.

“Don’t leave,” he pleads with Maglor. A child’s whimper, yes, but he trots it out shamelessly. Such pleas charm, rather than alarm, his next brother.

“You ought to take better care of yourself,” Maglor says, just as expected. He puts his instrument aside to fuss over the flannel sweating around Maedhros’ throat. “Is this lesson enough to reform you?”

 _I am sorry for my troubles in April,_ Maedhros does not say.

 _I forgive you_ , Maglor answers somehow, without words.

“I’ve not seen him.” Priests give penances, but Maedhros has put himself outside their reach. He lies too often to holy men. Thus, his penances appear by chance and hardship, at moments such as this. The sin might be idleness, and the penance an illness arriving when spirit and life were finally ready to leap forward. The sin might be lust, and the penance a subtle haunting of greater powers. The sin might be drunkenness—

“That does not surprise, exactly,” Athair says. “His sentence is not yet at its close; he remains behind the so-called bars that a wealthy lineage and a prominent brother build of silk and marble. Nonetheless, I hear rumors. I hear that, with one hand, he meddles in the affairs of science, medicine…even in the loathsome classification of _races_. _There_ is a dastardly design that two hundred years shall not set right. But I digress. With the other hand, he chokes himself for show, to seek a hangman’s pity.”

“You mean…” Maedhros himself is a little choked, and not only by his illness. Not only by the sins of _his_ hands.

“He’ll plead madness, I believe. That is where such a scheme ends. An asylum, what with his wealth, would be more easily navigable than a prison…even a prison of luxury.” Athair shakes his head. “Jail-crow that he is, he would be satisfied by the pretense of a weak mind! Imagine it, Maedhros. He pleads madness, and is shut away somewhere money can buy. He has made friends and allies in the world of medicine. They will seek him out for study, and he _will_ wind them round his long fingers, round and round forever! It is just the sort of serpent-scheme he would use to evade justice.”

Maedhros coughs. “ _Is_ there justice, for one such as him?”

(Grandfather Finwe says, _Enjoy yourself a little, lad! The world is your oyster._ )

(Violet says, _Visit me more often, you have nothing else to do_.)

(The City offers everything. Every distraction he could want, and—

He _wants_.)

“Justice? I can scarcely hope so. It has been four years since—I should be _grateful_ for silence, shouldn’t I?” Fortunately, Athair does not wait for an answer. “Grateful to hear nothing at all. And yet I cannot be grateful, Maedhros. Even without proof of my prophecy, I would stake my life on this: he is a more dangerous man when shut away than when in the public eye.”

Fear. Penance. Maedhros stirs restlessly; his head pounds. His throat is sick and he cannot breathe properly through his nose. He must ask Athair the question; the same one he must always ask.

“What can I do?”

In the forest, he welcomes Celegorm’s confidences. In the kitchen, he bakes with Caranthir. Even prickly Curufin is proud to show his metalwork. And the twins, once they are very certain that their Maitimo is not dying of a trifling head-cold, drag him as their willing packhorse, uphill and down. Mother and Maglor are his in the evening, talking of reading and music and gardens and ideas.

Berrying…hay-making…climbing under the pines, and sometimes up them. Summer, hither and yon.

“Athair always steals you away for a gloomy talk,” Maglor says one night, with a side-long glance. He has returned to their shared room; he is combing his hair before he sleeps. An odd habit of Maglor’s; he says it is for health. It helps hair grow; something like that, but for _health_ , not _vanity_.

“Mm.” Maedhros stares at his crossed ankles. His breath is still a little damp, a little muffled, but his head is clear. Light.

“Did you escape it this time?”

“No.” Sometimes he is too tired to lie. And at any rate, there are secrets left aplenty.

_What can you do? I wish the day would come when your own path was clear to you, son. But for now…_

_Watch and wait,_ Athair said, like always _. But more than that, learn what your grandfather is too kind to understand. His retirement will leave him surrounded with friends. I rather imagine there are enemies, too. Find them out, and find whether they will be yours._

_Mine._

_And,_ Athair said, _Return early, this year. We never have as much time as we think._


End file.
